


One

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:39:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16897878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: I can't disable comments on this site. If I could, I would. Please pretend that I have.





	One

One brings Sorrow

Two bring Joy

Three a Girl

And Four a Boy

Five bring Want

And Six bring Gold

Seven bring secrets never told

Eight bring wishing

Nine bring kissing

Ten, the love my own heart's

missing!

(traditional children's nursery rhyme about magpies)

  
  


1 The Brothers

 

It was centuries ago.

They hadn't been children for decades, but they were not yet men. Summer was hot and sticky on their skin, and Thor was bringing wind and rain every night to let the realm sleep. And the realm did sleep, but Thor couldn't, and neither could his brother. The air was cool and comfortable, but they went uneasily to their beds, limbs shifting, minds pacing. They'd been having dreams that made them afraid to close their eyes.

If they had described the imagery to anyone else, it would have sounded pleasant:

I was riding a horse through a meadow.

I bathed in a spring.

I hunted boar in the forest.

I flew over an orchard with the wings of a bird.

I leapt hedges on the legs of a doe.

All perfectly lovely.

It wasn't what was in the dreams that frightened them; it was what wasn't in the dreams.

Never before had Thor's dreams lacked Loki, and Loki's dreams had always featured Thor.

They were alone at night for the first time in their lives.

It left them nervous. Fearful. Possessive. They wouldn't leave each other's sides during the days, which left them irritable, as they had divergent interests and the short tempers that accompany adolescence.

And then the nightmares got worse, though, still, nothing inherently alarming happened in them.

Thor would stare out at the sea in his dreams and Loki would look deep into the stars.

They had these two dreams every night for three weeks. They would lie awake, bellies tight with dread, lamps lit to fend off the night, trying to fight off sleep. But their bodies would betray them. Their lids would sag and their minds would drift, and they'd find themselves exactly where they feared to go: Thor gazing on the ocean and Loki looking at the night sky.

After the twenty-first identical dream, Loki woke at dawn, drenched in tears and sweat, his thin limbs shaking. He tugged his clothes on and went next door to Thor's room, finding his brother already dressed and waiting for him, face grim, eyes red and wreathed in shadow.

Loki grabbed Thor's hand and led him to the throne room, intending to wait there for Odin and being surprised to find him already seated on Hlidskjalf.

Thor assumed they were going to tell their father of their nightmares. Loki walked them to the dais and they knelt and bowed. Then Loki led them up the stairs until they stood looking into Odin's eye.

Loki held out his hand. Odin put Gungnir in it.

“Thank you, Father,” Loki said, and Thor could only blink and join his brother in bowing once more before they descended the stair and left the room.

They went to the stable and chose a mount. Loki hadn't let go of Thor's hand once up to this point, but they separated at last to climb onto the horse, palms sweaty where they'd been pressed together. It had been years since they rode together on one horse, but Thor said nothing.

“Hold this,” Loki said, handing the spear back to Thor so that his hands would be free to manage the reins.

They'd forgone a saddle. Thor was sitting behind Loki. He had the spear held out in his right hand and the fingers of his left were curled around Loki's hip. His head was bowed throughout the ride. He stared at the nape of Loki's neck and the bones of the spine where they pressed up against his pale skin and disappeared under his collar. He could smell the sleep sweat on both of them, the scent fearful and sad. His brother's shoulders were slumped in a way that meant Loki was tired. Thor realized his own shoulders were doing the same thing, but he made no effort to stop them.

And then the air was cool and damp and dark against Thor's skin, and the horse was standing still.

They were under an enormous ash tree. Thor could hear the magpies singing to each other, hidden up in its branches. A pair of them, from the sound of it. Cicadas were buzzing and insects and dandelion seeds were drifting lazily through the sunlight overhead.

Loki raised his right leg over the horse's neck and slid down its left side, reaching to take Gungnir from Thor so that he could dismount.

He took Thor's hand again and led him to the base of the tree. Loki held the spear low to the ground and slid it under the turf, prying up a strip of grass and rolling it aside, opening the earth. Then he wiped the spear clean with his shirt.

Thor felt like he was in a dream. Like he had been here before. And he knew it couldn't have been a nightmare, because his brother was here with him, so he wasn't afraid. He offered his hand without having to be asked. Loki drew the sharp edge of the spear's tip over his brother's skin and quickly put a matching gash in his own palm. They clenched their fists over the wound they'd made in the earth and recited oaths as easily as nursery rhymes; words neither of the brothers had ever heard or read or had any reason to know.

They let the ground swallow their blood until their wounds clotted shut and then they carefully tucked the strip of grass back into place. It fit so neatly they would have sworn they'd never disturbed it, but for the blood on their hands.

They wiped the spear clean and rode back to the palace to return the weapon to their father, finding him bent over a scroll. He nodded and took their wounded hands, running his thumbs over the cuts and healing them before squeezing his sons' shoulders and sending them on their way.

Thor didn't want to spar, and Loki was still too agitated to focus, so they got back on the horse and trotted off to a favored pond to swim.

When they'd had their fill of the water they lied down in the grass and curled up on their sides facing each other, foreheads and knees bumping together.

“Let's take a nap and see if it's any better,” Loki murmured, and Thor nodded.

When they woke they felt refreshed for the first time in months.

“Well?” Loki asked.

Thor knotted his brow and closed his eyes, remembering.

“I dreamt we went walking through the city,” Thor began. “All the horses followed us. We were accused of being horse thieves and sent to work in the farmers' fields. But the horses followed us again and trampled the plants... and we kept eating everything we picked and never getting full. So they asked us to go home.”

“Sounds like a prophecy,” Loki laughed.

“What about you?” Thor asked and Loki smiled.

“We stole mother's dresses and made them into a tent. And she came to chide us, but we hadn't left her any clothes of her own, so she was wearing ours. And she wouldn't give them back. When we grew out of the clothes on our backs we had to take apart our tent and wear her gowns. They looked wonderful when we rode into battle.”

Thor hummed and sagged into the grass, delighted and relieved.

In every dream that came after, they were never again without each other.

 

2 The Stars

 

Thor didn't have to ask. Or threaten. The alliance was made the moment their mother fell. Their father fell in the first battle after the attack on Asgard, and Thor was glad for Odin. He could follow Frigga, and Thor wonders if his mother had guided the hand wielding the sword that speared his father. He wouldn't put it past her.

Loki can't begrudge his brother's anger or distrust. He's earned it. Loki has spent his life keeping score. He owes Thor a few points these days, and there is little he hates more than being in debt. But he's still not sorry for Midgard... apart from the knife to Thor's side - that was regrettable. He has no pity or remorse for the humans. Billions more where they came from. And they do worse to each other every day, killing their own kind in slow stages, with pieces of paper and oceans of indifference. They hardly ever die good deaths.

He's glad to have Thor away from them. They make his brother forget that he's a god, and Loki would prefer that Thor never lose sight of that.

Thor tells Loki that Malekith wants to return the realms to the darkness that came before them. Scatter them all. Even at the cost of his own world.

Loki doesn't understand. He had long thought Malekith clever. But madness must have touched him. Pot, kettle, Loki admits to himself.

The plan is flawed. Deeply. Hopelessly.

For there is no darkness without light.

Loki has known since he was a boy. There was never just darkness. What preceded the realms was a nameless thing. One and many. Light and dark. All and nothing. But never darkness only. You cannot have a thing without its opposite. Can't have half of a set. There is no up without down. No hot without cold. No joy without sorrow. And there is no line that divides the two: the pairs fade into each other, features of the same face.

Malekith has done one clever thing.

Loki blames Midgard for this, possibly because it's become a hobby of his.

The elf has housed the spell that devours the light within Jane Foster, knowing Thor will protect her. Will not kill her.

Loki takes Thor and Jane to Svartalfheim. The spell will act on this realm first: if it is darkness Malekith wants, Loki won't keep him waiting.

Loki sends Jane out of harm's way with a spell to suspend her above the realm. He'd like to let her get killed. That would solve their problem. If Jane dies, the spell breaks. But something in Thor would break, too, and Loki has already traveled far enough down that road to know that it doesn't lead anywhere he wants to go.

Jane floats above the battlefield, shielded by Loki's seidr, and the realm grows darker as she devours its already-meager light. The brothers are back to back, fending off an army. The fight is unfair: the elves don't stand a chance. They face the wrath of two gods. Every swing of the hammer and thrust of the spear scatters and skewers dozens. Gungnir is red. Mjolnir's head is dripping blood.

The Dokkalfar have no intention of winning, but they want to die fighting.

Loki can spoil that for them, too.

“Bring a storm,” Loki shouts over his shoulder. “And wind. Drench this plain and every soldier on it. Catch Malekith and take him up with you. And don't kill him, do you understand?”

Thor nods.

The rain is blinding. It stings the skin when it falls. The thunder shakes the ground and deafens the army. They flinch at every crack. This weather is foreign to them. Too loud. Too bright. Too chaotic.

So often Loki has heard that he and his brother are night and day. And it's true, but not in the way people think. Thor is not day, and Loki is not night: they are each both.

Malekith wanted darkness.

It wasn't what he expected.

He certainly never thought it would come from Thor.

But Loki always knew. For what Loki did on Midgard is merely the shadow of what Thor began on Jotunheim.

They are both murderers.

Monsters.

Gods.

The realm is black with Thor's rain.

Loki will bring light to it.

He reaches out his hands and calls ice. It spreads across the field, climbing up the soaked soldiers, freezing them in place, bleeding through their flesh and into the marrow of their bones. The ground is pale now, eerily bright in the growing darkness. The rain has turned to snow.

Thor lands lightly beside his brother. He has Malekith by the hair.

Loki binds the elf's lips with a spell and sets him in an orb of seidr, shielding him from what's to come: Loki has plans for him.

“Bring Mjolnir down on the center of the battlefield as hard as you can,” Loki says, and Thor's smile could chill the heart of a star.

Loki brings Gungnir down at the same moment Thor's hammer makes contact with the earth.

Everything shatters.

Ice in the shapes of arms and legs, falling to the ground and being sent to shivers.

And then silence.

Loki calls Jane down and they turn to face their captive.

But Malekith is grinning.

And then he's slitting his own throat.

Loki screams and calls away his seidr, rushing to stop the blood, but the elf's knife was sharp and his hand was steady. He was always prepared to die for this. Now he has.

“Damn,” Loki whispers, closing his eyes against the sting of this one loss, and what it's going to cost him.

“What is it?” Thor asks. “Were you going to let him live?”

“No,” Loki murmurs. “I was going to put the spell within him and kill him to break it.”

“Is there another means of undoing it?” Thor asks.

“Yes and no,” Loki answers

“What does that mean?” Thor growls.

“Someone else has to die.”

Thor's face falls.

The realm is darkening with each passing second. The stars are starting to dim. Jane's eyes are beginning to glow. Loki casts lights of seidr over their heads.

“Put the spell in me,” Thor says.

“No,” Loki says flatly.

“Why not?”

“I can't”

“Why not?”

“I can't,” Loki snarls. “I won't. Don't ask it of me again.”

“Then kill me,” Jane says, and Loki's heart soars, but Thor is shaking his head.

“No,” Thor says. “It's my fault you're here. It should be me.”

Loki's hope dies where it stands. He turns to Jane, murmurs a spell, pinches her nose shut between his left finger and thumb, wrenches her jaw open with his right hand, and covers her mouth with his own. He takes a deep breath, drawing Malekith's curse into himself. Jane's eyes dim back to the pretty brown of tiger's eye and she coughs and presses her hands to her belly and sternum. She looks almost bereft. Loki understands why: his chest is filled with the strangest feeling. Like silent humming. It's surprisingly pleasant.

“Go,” Loki says. “Take her to Vanaheim to heal and then home to Midgard.”

“Loki-”

“Go,” Loki snaps, exasperated. “You're in no position to argue. You don't know the spells.”

“What will happen to you?” Thor asks.

Loki huffs a laugh.

“I've already told you.”

Thor grabs his brother by the shoulders and shakes him once.

“Don't do this,” Thor breathes.

“You'd rather I brought ruin to all the realms? Don't tempt me, brother. Now leave.”

“There must be another way.”

“I'm all ears,” Loki says.

Thor's face twists. He doesn't know the answer, he only knows he wants it to exist.

“Go,” Loki says again, and Thor has him by the back of the neck, their foreheads pressed together, his head shaking back and forth.

“I'll be alone,” Thor whispers.

“You'll be alive,” Loki corrects, and Thor crumbles at this.

His face falls to Loki's shoulder and his chest heaves with sobs. They both stand there shaking, left cold by the sweat of battle and the chill of Loki's ice.

“Go now. Please, Thor. The sooner it's done, the sooner it's in the past.”

“Do you wish me to send you on your way?” Thor asks, jaw clenching.

And now it's Loki's turn to break, tears flowing down his cheeks in unbroken streams, eyes struggling to see his brother's face in the failing light.

“Yes,” Loki admits. “But I won't do that to you. It would haunt you, brother. You know it would. And it would have to be a slow death to give you enough time to depart before my heart stopped beating and the light was released. I'd rather die swiftly, if you don't mind.”

Thor nods, lips wavering, eyes flooded and shining.

“It's a shame no one will see the burst of light when it's freed,” Loki murmurs. “It will likely be quite lovely.”

Thor hugs him tight and Loki returns it, running his hand over the back of Thor's blond head, shushing him and soothing one of the only parts of his brother that isn't swaddled in armor. And he could easily stay like this forever, so he gives Thor's head a final pat and grips him by the upper arms, pulling him back slowly. Thor sneaks a kiss onto Loki's cheek and Loki smiles.

The lights Loki made with his magic are fading with the spell in his breast. The stars are all but gone.

“Run,” Loki says. “And never look back.”

Thor nods and turns and Loki sees the column of light from the Bifrost warping toward him with the gravity of the spell. There's a blur of red as Thor rises in it with Jane tucked to his chest. And then it's gone, leaving a beautiful brand in the ice.

It's better this way, Loki decides.

If he had killed Jane, Thor never would have forgiven him. Jane would have won. She'd have given everything. And how could Loki top that? Thor will be proud of him now. And heartsick for him. It's a kind of victory. A debt paid.

Loki looks at Gungnir, seeming to glow in his hands in spite of everything.

The weapon is old. Its magic is much like Mjolnir's. The spear never misses its target. Never fails its master.

He casts his armor aside, centers the tip of the blade over his heart, and sends it home with all the strength in his being.

The shock of the blast shatters Svartalfheim as the light streaks from Loki's body and back out into the stars, dissolving the tiny god as it goes.

Gungnir spins slowly through the dust and rubble that are all that remain of that realm.

Thor takes Jane to Vanir healers and, once she's well, back home to Midgard.

He and his friends help to relocate those who survived the attack on Asgard to new homes on Vanaheim so that their children will be able to find spouses when they're grown.

“Is there aught I may do for you, lady?” Thor asks Sif.

“Our people need their king,” she says.

“They live on Vanaheim. Odr is their king. We Aesir are too few to stand alone. The next generation will be Vanir. They'll know nothing of Asgard. But they'll live. It is no loss.”

“You're their king.”

“I'm a tempest in a teapot,” Thor winks, pulling her into a hug and kissing her cheek. “Farewell, my friend.”

“Where are you going?” Sif asks, bewildered.

“Home.”

“There's nothing there for you,” she whispers, and Thor nods.

  
  


3 The Sea

 

On Asgard, Thor drowns his woes with work.

He builds stone ships with the rubble of the palace and burns the dead who had no kin left to do it for them - makes mounds to bury their ashes.

He salvages what can be saved. Excavates his old room. Unearths Hlidskjalf and finds it unmarked beneath the rubble. He considers sitting on it to gaze on the realms, but he knows there is something he won't see, and he wants no proof of its absence.

He brings the rain. Tends to the rivers, clearing debris. Gathers the livestock that scattered during the war. Looks after a few fields. Cuts hay for the horses and cows. Shears wheat and mills it with Mjolnir's stubborn head. Finds a foal he likes – a leggy black thing that bites and kicks him but never runs away - and trains it.

He goes to Idunn's orchards and calls for her. Asgard is so changed that he has abandoned his old habits, walking, loud and careless, through the trees. A wooden bucket breaks against his skull and he ducks, raising Mjolnir and flying away with all the haste he can muster.

She is exactly as he remembers.

He goes back the next day to practice stealing fruit. He gets two apples and one black eye - a bargain in Thor's book.

He looks for the Norns and finds them at their well, as ever. He knows better than to ask them anything, even a simple How are you?

“I hope that you are well, my sisters, and if you have need of aid, you have only to ask,” Thor says.

They'll never ask. To be indebted to any god or man is more than they can bear. It's bad enough that Thor made the offer, for now they owe him thanks for it. They nod their heads almost imperceptibly to erase their debt and the god of thunder winks because his sharp eyes saw it anyway.

At the edge of an old wood there's a cave by a pool. Their mother used to take them there as children to swim and picnic and watch the birds bathe. Thor lives in the cave while he builds himself a home.

He makes a modest house of peat, not far from the pool. It's furnished with strange luxuries. Tables and chairs salvaged from the palace. Tableware of porcelain. Silver cutlery. A beautiful bed - Frigga's. It was the only thing in her rooms that survived – even her looms had been crushed, and Thor had wept like something wild and lost when he saw the rollers in pieces and the shuttle on the floor.

The bed smells of her still. Thor's heart will break afresh when her scent fades, so he rarely sleeps in the thing.

He never dreams.

He spends all his free time at the edge of the sea, staring out into the hazy point where the water and ocean meet at the horizon and blur together, one unbroken wall of silver. He falls asleep on the sand and the stars watch him sleep. On sleepless nights he watches the stars fall and whispers his wishes to them as they plunge toward the sea.

On a warm and windless day Thor spends the entire afternoon floating on his back in the pool. A bird lands on his breast where it breaks the surface of the water and then cautiously hops onto his submerged belly, dipping and flapping as it bathes. The tips of its wings flash white. A magpie.

One for sorrow, Thor thinks, and smiles.

He peeks down over his cheeks to watch it wash itself until it flies off.

The creature is on his roof when he returns home. He knows he shouldn't encourage it, but he feeds it the crumbs of his dinner, setting a plate out on the ground for it. When he turns back inside, the bird darts over his shoulder and in through the door. It lands on the edge of an ornamental bowl and reaches in to remove a ring that Thor found in Frigga's room.

The bird pauses.

Thor stares.

“It's too small for me,” Thor shrugs. “Perhaps it will win you a mate.”

The bird flies back out the door with the bauble in its beak.

The weather changes. The storms Thor brings are strange. Willful. He makes no effort to rein them in. Some days the thunderheads are tinged with green, much as they are on Midgard when tornadoes threaten. Other days Thor brings peaceful rain and lies down on his back to let the water drum against his bare skin. The raindrops are warm.

On midsummer, Thor's rain turns to snow, and he laughs at the sky, hearing the sound echo back at him.

He searches for cookware in the ruins of the city. As he nears the palace he sees a dark shape sitting on the throne. When he draws closer, the shadow resolves itself into six magpies. He wonders if Hlidskjalf is showing them the realms.

He sleeps through much of winter, rising in the morning to tend to the cows, goats, and horses and then going back to sleep until the sun rises again. He leaves a window cracked in his house so the magpie can slip in to steal the crumbs of his breakfast.

Spring comes and leaves him restless. His legs carry him far across the realm. He flies to the barn every morning with Mjolnir and then returns to the place he last set foot in his travels.

The sun grows warm. He's nearly home but he's weary.

He stops to rest in the shade of an ash and hears birdsong. Hears wings fluttering and sees branches bobbing overhead. Blurs of black and white. He leans over and cocks his head to get a better view. Four shining eyes peer down on him. 

“Found your mate,” Thor notes.

He leaves the birds some meat he cured and walks on past his house, out to stare at the sea, finding it a warm pale blue that blends into the sky.

He hasn't looked back. He's followed his brother's order. He doesn't think of that day.

But Thor is no fool. He had a clever teacher. He knows that pairs cannot be severed. What has passed and what is to come are points on the same path. Loki never said Thor couldn't look forward. Never said he couldn't hope.

Never said goodbye.

Thor's fingers trace the runes on the head of his hammer and he thinks of seidr.

He has always known that magic is a tricky thing, and it was no surprise the stuff found a kindred spirit in his brother.

And he knows how the art first came to Asgard. He knows what it cost.

Odin hung himself from a tree to get it. Died for it. His gamble paid out twofold: his life was restored, and he gained all the spells that the runes could form.

Thousands of years later, Odin gave his eye to win a war and gain a son. Reckless, perhaps, but generous, too.

And Thor himself has made the bargain of sacrifice; he died as a mortal to save one realm and rose as a god to save two.

He knows what his brother paid.

And he knows that he is a brother, not just a son.

He is part of a set.

A pair.

There can be no Thor without Loki, and no Loki without Thor.

I'm still here, Thor realizes, and tumbles down laughing until he falls asleep on the beach.

That night Thor dreams of Gungnir. Of the things it has seen.

When Loki was left to die by Laufey, Odin brought the weapon to Jotunheim and found him.

When Thor and Loki cut their hands and spoke the oaths that bound them, the spear drank their blood and dug its grave.

When Mjolnir's blow knocked the brothers from the Bifrost, Gungnir linked them.

Thor sees the blade plunge into his brother's heart and watches as Loki is shattered by the light of a thousand stars.

He wakes screaming and finds the weapon standing upright before him, planted in the sand.

He trembles and weeps for three hours, then snorts at himself and goes to feed the horses.

Thor's dreams return, and Loki is always there in them.

They live together in a tree and hop from branch to branch.

They swim for years in the sea, never needing to come up for air.

They race across meadows on foot, chasing horses and overtaking them, leaping hedges and brooks.

They fly together through storms, turning rain to snow and tinting it impossible colors.

The dreams bring a restfulness to Thor's sleep that had been absent without them. They remind him of things he knows, but takes for granted.

The shape of his brother's face.

The shapes his brother takes.

The first time Loki shape-shifted, Thor wept.

Loki had turned into a falcon and flown away. Thor thought he would never come back – that he had lost his brother to a joy he could never hope to offer him at home. Loki was only gone for twenty minutes, but it took the rest of the day to calm Thor down.

 

4 The Circle

 

Spring wears on and Thor revels in the awkward loveliness of foals, calves, and kids. The kids are fond of him. He sits cross-legged in the fields and lets them hop on and off of his shoulders until they tire of it, then gathers them into his lap to pet the bony little bundles of limbs.

“You're built like my brother,” he teases, and grins at their sleepy bleating.

He builds himself a proper oven and learns how to bake bread. It takes a lot of waiting, but he has time. Somehow the taste makes his house feel like a home in a way it never has before.

The days grow long and balmy. Thor swims in every body of water he knows. The sun paints his skin with oak and honey tones. He catches his reflection in a puddle and laughs. He looks ridiculous. He shears off his beard and shaves himself barefaced with a blade he saved from the ruin of Loki's room. Fixes his hair with the shard of an ivory comb he found on his mother's floor.

The weather is still strange. Capricious. Rebellious.

“Are you teasing me, brother?” Thor says to the snow that falls for a few hours on a warm day in early June.

The forests are green and lush in a way Thor can't ever remember seeing before. He feels drawn to them, following the tracks of deer with no intention of hunting them. Pretending not to see their speckled fawns hiding motionless beneath ferns.

A fox darts out in front of him on one of his walks through the woods and Thor startles. He hears laughter hidden in the voices of the birds that scatter at his shout.

“Has the god of mischief grown shy?” Thor asks, and shit falls on his shoulder as feathers flap overhead.

Summer is hot. Thor often takes a swim to cool off well before noon.

On the solstice he's warm and restless. He had slept in his mother's bed the night before and it soothed his nerves, but when he woke he startled the magpies that had been perched atop his open door, and they startled him in turn. Nine or ten of them. He had left the entry open all night to let in the breeze, so he supposes it serves him right.

His limbs tingle and itch if he stands still and he's sweating like one taken with fever. The air feels thick and strange. Stifling. Electric.

He wanders down to the pool by the cave and walks into the water. The breeze cools his cheeks as he floats on his back, waving his arms lazily, remembering the bird bathing on his belly over a year ago.

A shadow falls over his face and water drips down onto him. Something huge and dark, like the monstrous things in the belly of the sea, looms above him. Its skin is black and translucent. Barbels hang at the edges of its gaping mouth, and its teeth look like needles of glass. Its gills are grey and limp, raw and horrible behind its cloudy eyes. Transparent fins supported by vicious-looking spines crest its head and line its sides. The beast is arched above him like a serpent - possessing the body of an eel.

Thor laughs and sputters, tipping over in the water and turning to throw his arms around the creature.

He weeps with joy.

“What gave me away?” the thing says, voice deep and wet.

“Nothing so big lives in a pool this small,” Thor scolds, smacking the monster in his arms.

“You never know.”

Thor snorts.

Loki melts back into himself and Thor stares.

“Have I fallen into madness?” Thor whispers.

“Possibly. But that makes me no less real.”

Thor smiles and squeezes Loki's shoulders and then drops his hands. He stares as Loki dips beneath the water and bobs up again, pushing his hair back and wringing it out. Frigga's ring is on the little finger of his left hand.

They walk through the woods, eating fruit as they find it, tongues and fingertips stained purple with juice. They bend to drink from a stream, lowering their lips to the icy water and taking long sips. Hunt a boar and eat the whole thing.

Loki says nothing and Thor follows suit.

Thor falls asleep at the seaside and when he wakes in the night he sees his brother's eyes shining down on him in the dark.

When he rises at dawn, Thor finds his hair in plaits and sees footprints leading down into the ocean.

Thor tends his flocks and fields before following his feet to the palace. The plants are beginning to devour it. If there's anything else he wants to take from Asgard's rubble, he'll have to do it soon. He can't think of anything he needs, and it snaps something inside of him. A thousand years in this city and it has released him so readily. Failed to fully bind him to its old form with sentiment.

He never mourned his family. He went through the ritual of it. All the proper motions. But he had no time to weep, and he wasn't allowed to look back.

He does it now.

When he returns home that night his brother is cooking a fish in the fire pit beside his house. A beautiful tuna. Both of their faces are red and swollen with tears. Neither of them mentions it.

Weeks pass like this. In amicable silence.

But Loki is wary and watchful. Thor can feel his brother's eyes on him, peering out through other faces: the wolf with green eyes that drinks from the far edge of the pool. The magpie that flits above him through the trees. The buck with black antlers that follows him through the forest.

Thor wakes in his bed one morning to find his brother stretched out beside him, hands folded over his belly, face tipped toward Thor. It's the first time he's seen the strange god sleeping since he returned. He sneaks a few braids into Loki's long black hair and leaves breakfast on the table for him.

When he comes back from the barn, the breakfast has been eaten and his brother is back in bed.

This goes on until the end of autumn.

 

5 The Lines

 

At the first snowfall, Loki wakes and eats his breakfast. He finally feels rested.

It hasn't escaped his attention that the breakfasts have grown more elaborate as the days have gone on. It fills him with a warmth that has nothing to do with temperature. It reminds him of his mother, and the realization hits Loki in a way that shocks him, because he should have seen it coming.

Thor is Frigga's.

He thinks of his brother, bringing rain to slake the earth's thirst and tending the babes of all the beasts in the realm.

Over the summer, Thor had raised a nest of newborn rabbits whose mother had fallen to a falcon - a nearly impossible task. Loki peeked on their progress every morning as he ate his breakfast, amazed to see the little things growing, always expecting to find an empty box and a fresh grave by the side of the house.

But they all lived.

Preposterous.

The goddess of childbirth, Loki giggles to himself.

Loki thinks of his own strange ways.

Hot and cold.

Vicious and peaceful.

Ever a force of creation as much as destruction.

Trading his life for the realms.

All-father.

I am Odin's.

We are our parents.

He laughs until he cries.

He's still awake when Thor comes back from the barn.

“Supper?” is all Thor says.

Loki nods.

The days pass slowly.

Loki does much of the hunting. The cold makes them hungry. At the end of his first full week of consciousness, Loki fells an elk. Thor is outside tending the fire and sees his brother coming down the hill with the beast slung over his blue shoulders. Thor grins.

They eat a quarter of it and Loki builds a case of ice to store the rest.

Loki starts cleaning the skull after supper, working at it late into the evening beside the dying fire in front of the house.

Thor comes outside.

“It will still be dead in the morning. Let it be. Try sleeping at night and working by day.”

“How novel,” Loki teases, rising and making for the door.

Thor stops him with a finger to his forehead.

“You are not setting one foot in that house until you've washed.”

Loki is covered in bits of blood, fur, and brains.

“Fair enough,” Loki sighs, and mutters, “Spoilsport,” before his brother is out of earshot.

A snowball hits Loki between the shoulder blades as he's bent over a bucket, bathing.

The silence grows stranger between them with each passing day.

Never unpleasant or awkward. Quite the opposite, in fact. Tense. Heated. Full of promise. There are thousands of things they could say to each other, and they're all being held back. Gold coins in a thin linen sack. A few more, and the weight will prove too much. They'll all come pouring out the torn seam at the bottom.

Loki wonders which one of them will break first.

But then it happens, and he's not sure where to allot the points.

Loki wakes in the middle of the night to find his brother awake beside him, head propped up on one elbow, watching him sleep.

Loki scowls at him and Thor laughs.

And then he leans over and kisses Loki on the mouth before lying down on his back and settling in to sleep.

And it takes longer than Loki cares to admit for him to remember the rules of this language. The conjugations.

The kiss was quick, but it was no chaste peck.

Thor had pulled Loki's lower lip between his own for a fraction of a second.

“So you've abandoned our brotherhood at last,” Loki says, and Thor snorts.

“No.”

“You kissed me.”

“I've kissed you a quarter of a million times by now,” Thor yawns.

“Not like that. The others were different.”

No,” Thor corrects gently. “They've always been the same.”

“Brothers don't kiss like that,” Loki says.

“According to whom?”

“Everyone.”

“Not me,” Thor answers.

“It's... frowned upon,” Loki says, lamely.

“By whom?” Thor sighs. “Who is left to frown upon it?”

“Thor, we can't. There will be nothing left of me. You'll take everything. I'll have no power over you. This tension - this distance - is all we have. It's what sustains us. What are we without our want? It's defined us for a thousand years. We'll be lost.”

“The god of mischief and chaos craves order at last,” Thor marvels. “That's where you draw the line? With all that's passed between us, you'd stop at a kiss?” Thor boggles, and then he's laughing.

They argue about it for hours and everything Thor says is true and rational.

And it's infuriating – Thor has never bested Loki with words before.

Loki shifts Jotun and knocks his brother out cold with a swing of his fist.

When Thor wakes, Loki is sitting beside him, holding a block of ice to his cheekbone, trying to keep down the swelling from the punch he threw. Thor snorts.

“You're a fool,” Loki sighs.

“Probably,” Thor agrees.

They eat more of the elk. Thor makes a stew with it, and it's so good Loki accidentally moans at the first bite. Thor pretends not to notice so his brother won't punch him again.

Loki finishes cleaning the skull. He brings it inside and hangs it above the door to the house. The antlers graze the roof.

“What's its name?” Thor asks.

“Stewart, with an e,” Loki answers, and Thor narrows his eyes. “Stew for short.”

Thor groans.

Loki lies awake all night waiting for another kiss, but it never comes, though he supposes he might not deserve one yet after the punch.

The next night passes the same way.

And the next.

In the morning Thor looks over at his brother and scowls: Loki's eyes are bloodshot and angry and the skin beneath them is purple and sunken.

“Are you ill?” Thor asks, and Loki turns his head and glares at him.

“What?” Thor says.

“Unless you wish to spend the rest of your life in the body of a buzzard, dining on carrion, you will kiss me, Odinson,” Loki growls.

“My head still hurts from the last kiss I gave you.”

Loki huffs and rolls over, kissing the bruise on Thor's cheek.

Thor catches Loki's jaw and presses their lips together. The kiss is sustained for only a second, but there's a fullness to it. The barest hint of wetness at the center of Thor's lips.

Thor brushes Loki's hair back and kisses his forehead before hopping out of bed and dressing to head to the barn.

Loki sighs and plays the kisses over and over in his mind, toying halfheartedly with his erection. He huffs at himself and climbs out of bed to make breakfast before his brother gets back.

When they've eaten, Thor rises and stretches.

“Shall we hunt?” Thor asks. “Duck would be nice for supper.”

Loki scoffs at him and points to the bed in answer.

Thor nods, shucks off his clothes, and climbs in beside his brother.

Loki bellies up to him, warm and soft and naked after everything. They slot their legs together and wind their arms around necks and ribs. Thor lets a sigh slide out over Loki's lips, and it's as much relief as excitement. They brush their mouths together and trade soft presses of lips while their hands rub and scratch the bare skin of their backs.

They doze and drift in and out of kisses all day.

They can feel each other's cocks, full and hot against their bellies, but apart from the occasional involuntary thrust of hips, they do nothing about them. The brothers feel warm and heavy and languid in a way that's too delicious for words. They're not ready to break this spell. They will linger in it until their bodies fail them.

They sleep deeply that night and in the morning Thor groans.

“I have to tend to the barn,” Thor sighs, and kisses Loki's cheek before he leaves.

Loki doesn't bother to make breakfast.

When his brother returns, he merely pulls back the blanket and tosses his head, motioning for Thor to join him again.

Their kisses grow longer and deeper, lips parting in slow stages. The wetness makes them moan. When Thor sucks Loki's tongue into his mouth, Loki spills across their bellies and Thor makes a beautiful shattered sound, gripping Loki's behind and heaving him closer, thrusting twice against him and spending in the hollow of his hip.

Loki sends Thor out to hunt ducks that afternoon and sneaks off through the Bifrost while his brother is away.

Thor comes back with two plump drakes and Loki cleans them and cooks them. They're so rich it's almost indecent.

“Where did you go?” Thor asks. “I heard the Bifrost.”

“Midgard,” Loki mumbles, scowling.

Thor raises his eyebrows.

He learns the purpose of Loki's visit later that night.

They've been sprawled across the bed kissing frantically for over an hour when Loki shoves Thor onto his back and scrambles away to pull something from the pocket of the leggings he left on the floor.

It's one of Midgard's strange soft bottles with tiny words printed all over it. Much of it is gibberish, as far as Thor can tell, and the few words that do make sense are, somehow, equally ridiculous.

“Personal lubricant,” Thor snorts.

“Your mortals are as impractical as they are prudish,” Loki sighs. “Why not call it 'fuck-slick' and be done with it?”

Thor giggles and brings his knees up toward his shoulders.

Loki hums his approval and drenches them both with the bulk of the contents of the bottle.

He climbs into place over Thor and lowers his hips, shimmying them slightly as he wiggles into his brother's body. He makes long slow passes with his hips and sees a grin spread over Thor's face.

“What is it?” Loki murmurs.

“You're like a salmon, swimming upstream to spawn... and I'm the river... or the bear that catches you as you leap.”

“I should have known better than to ask,” Loki sighs, rolling his eyes as he pumps his hips, but his lips are twitching into a smile and he's struggling to keep from baring his teeth.

The things Loki whispers when he spends leave Thor wide-eyed and trembling, spilling semen all over his chest.

Asgard grows strange and wild. Climate zones from other worlds begin to appear, and the flora and fauna that occupy them follow soon after.

Thor sees life from Midgard, Alfheim, and Vanaheim being woven together in his brother's webs.

Loki begins to give him explicit instructions on where and when to bring the rain, and for how long.

Days, nights, months, years, and realms blur together. Bodies blur together. Life and death blur together.

The brothers can't remember it ever being any other way. And perhaps it never was.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I can't disable comments on this site. If I could, I would. Please pretend that I have.


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